Studietrust Blog

16 December 2012Studietrust receives the FW de Klerk Goodwill Award 2013 (scroll down for Afrikaans) by Murray HofmeyrWe at Studietrust are grateful to the Board of the FW de Klerk Foundation for honouring us with the 2013 FW de Klerk Goodwill Award. We recognise the pivotal role of former President De Klerk in bringing about a South Africa in which goodwill has become possible. His courage to unban the ANC and other parties, and releasing from prison his eventual successor Mr Nelson Mandela and other leaders, set the stage for negotiations about the future of our country and rescued us from escalating violence and economic ruin. It was he who gave white South Africans the opportunity to vote in the 1992 Referendum. The fact that the yes vote carried the day opened the way for the New South Africa. Whites said yes for a constitutional democracy, the separation of powers and an independent judiciary. After his retirement from active politics Mr De Klerk through his Foundation continued to advocate these principles without which goodwill will be an empty concept.

Studietrust from its inception had one single focus: linking the young person with potential to educational opportunity. This allowed us to unite people from diverse backgrounds and persuasions around a vision of a future in which potential will not be wasted. We acknowledge the work of our founders and single out the friendship between Rev Jan Hofmeyr and our patron Mr Michael Morapeli in this regard.

We are happy that the Award announcement makes specific mention of Rev Jan Hofmeyr. He met Mr De Klerk in 1959 when they were both members of the group of South African student leaders who visited the United Kingdom on an Abe Bailey travel scholarship. Their careers took different directions with Mr De Klerk becoming an National Party minister and Rev Hofmeyr a minister of religion in the Black Dutch Reformed Church. Anticipating in hope the historical day of Mr De Klerk’s 2 February 1990 announcement in parliament, Rev Hofmeyr realised already in 1974 that South Africa will need more educated young people if it wanted a future and, with others, established Studietrust as a vehicle for raising funds to facilitate linking talent to opportunity. As a white South African who had the privilege of exposure to the world of black South Africans he did not only experience first-hand the effects of institutionalised dehumanisation but was also witness to the fact that talent is equally distributed all over the country. The problem, he realised, going against the grain of the dominant ideology of his time, was not the availability of potential but the lack of assembly points for young people with potential to gather and be given the chance to fulfil their promise.For decades Rev Hofmeyr worked tirelessly in between the two worlds. With enmity hardening and goodwill receding he on Sunday nights preached in white congregations against sinful separation and on Monday mornings regarded black students during campus visits in a different light than they were mostly accustomed to. He recognised their potential and saw the success through hard work that they were sometimes doubting themselves. In 1992 Rev Hofmeyr wrote in a Newsletter to donors about the importance of saying yes: “Over the years we aimed at saying YES to each child and young person around us. Yes to people who yearned to hear this word in contrast to the NO that since childhood so often fenced them in.” In receiving - with deep gratitude - the FW de Klerk Goodwill Award for 2013 we rededicate ourselves to our hard fought constitution with its institutionalised regard for unconditional human dignity and to a way of seeing the other that is enhancing our common humanity.Please visit our website for more information: www.studietrust.org.za ________________________

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